But why am I telling you this and why should you care? After all, you’re here to learn about how to build brand awareness on a limited budget, right?

Well, it’s not so much their huge valuation and success that’s remarkable, but how the company achieved it. DropBox built their brand with very little advertising by implementing several growth hacks, and in the process, ignored the startup industry norms.

In this post, we’ll share some of those strategies, and others, so that you too can build brand awareness with little marketing.

1. Referral Programs

Referral programs are powerful when correctly implemented. They build trust with your audience, more so than any traditional advertising will. You’re more likely to use a product when a friend refers you to it. I know, for example, when I started using FaceBook it was due to a referral.

While DropBox used tactics like a signup-driven home page and made signing up simple, their referral program was the game-changer. DropBox made it easy for those signing up to refer a friend and even incentivized them with extra storage. And the results? A 60% increase in sign-ups.

2. Start Your Own Blog

Even better, it doesn’t cost a fortune. But, it does require time and commitment to providing well-written content that solves customers problems. Focus on that, and you’ll reap the rewards. Here are a few tips to get started:

Finally, publish the content on social media to build awareness. Speaking of which…

3. Go Beyond Only Sharing Your Content

Social media is great to connect with existing followers and reach new audiences. But, make sure you’re not just publishing a post and hoping for the best. Otherwise, you’ll create a killer article with minimal shares and traffic.

A recent study by BuzzSumo and Moz analyzed 1 million posts. The results were alarming. “In a randomly selected sample of 100,000 posts over 50% had 2 or less Facebook interactions (shares, likes or comments) and over 75% had zero external links.”

Step 1: Set and Align Company and Social Media Goals

Your business goal may be to build brand awareness for your product in new markets. You can achieve this goal through different social media goals.

But, let’s focus on one: building relationships with influencers. It’s a tactic that works; top digital marketers like Neil Patel use it.

Step 2: Set Specific Tactics For Each Goal

Define different tactics for the goal. For the above example, a few tactics may include:

Creating a list of 50 influencers who are sharing content like yours.

Reaching out to those influencers to get them to share it or link back to your article.

Partnering with influencers to create a sponsored post.

Step 3: Rank Tasks

With limited resources and time, you need to rank tactics in order of importance. To help, use the value vs. complexity model. The idea is to tackles those tasks that are the least complex but offer the highest value. With that in mind, let’s first focus on creating the list, followed by reaching out and finally, creating a sponsored post.

Step 4: Delegate Tasks and Set ETA’s

Assign the different tasks to different people. For example, assign the job of finding 50 influencers to Nick, with an ETA of 20 August. If you’re a one-person show and doing it yourself, that’s also okay.

Now it’s time to get to work. Let’s examine the first two tactics: building a list of 50 influencers and reaching out to them.

The success of the strategy depends on the content being the same or better than the content the influencers shared. Also, remember it’s a number game, but you only need a few shares and/or links to start building your brand awareness online.

Step 5: Track Progress and Make Changes

Regardless what tactics you use, you’ll quickly see what’s working and what isn’t. You may need to re-prioritize tasks you thought weren’t complex and offered high value, with others.

Conclusion

These three powerful strategies are proof that you don’t have to spend a fortune to build brand awareness.

Will implementing these strategies take time? Sure. But I guarantee that if you take the time to apply these strategies, your brand exposure will skyrocket – and with it – your online success.

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